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From this definition of religion it follows:

(a) That in strictness there is but one religion. Man is a religious being, indeed, as having the capacity for this divine life. He is actually religious, however, only when he enters into this living relation to God. False religions are the caricatures which men given to sin, or the imaginations which men groping after light, form of this life of the soul in God.

Peabody, Christianity the Religion of Nature, 18—“If Christianity be true, it is not areligion, but the religion. If Judaism be also true, it is so not as distinct from but as coincident with Christianity, the one religion to which it can bear only the relation of a part to the whole. If there be portions of truth in other religious systems, they are not portions of other religions, but portions of the one religion which somehow or other became incorporated with fables and falsities.” John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:25—“You can never get at the true idea or essence of religion merely by trying to find out something that is common to all religions; and it is not the lower religions that explain the higher, but conversely the higher religion explains all the lower religions.” George P. Fisher: “The recognition of certain elements of truth in the ethnic religions does not mean that Christianity has defects which are to be repaired by borrowing from them; it only means that the ethnic faiths have in fragments what Christianity has as a whole. Comparative religion does not bring to Christianity new truth; it provides illustrations of how Christian truth meets human needs and aspirations, and gives a full vision of that which the most spiritual and gifted among the heathen only dimly discerned.”

Dr. C. H. Parkhurst, sermon on Proverbs 20:27—“The spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah”—“a lamp, but not necessarily lighted; a lamp that can be lit only by the touch of a divine flame”—man has naturally and universally a capacity for religion, but is by no means naturally and universally religious. All false religions have some element of truth; otherwise they could never have gained or kept their hold upon mankind. We need to recognize these elements of truth in dealing with them. There is some silver in a counterfeit dollar, else it would deceive no one; but the thin washing of silver over the lead does not prevent it from being bad money. Clarke, Christian Theology, 8—“See Paul's methods of dealing with heathen religion, in Acts 14 with gross paganism and in Acts 17 with its cultured form. He treats it with sympathy and justice. Christian theology has the advantage of walking in the light of God's self-manifestation in Christ, while heathen religions grope after God and worship him in ignorance”; cf. Acts 14:16—“We … bring you good tidings, that ye should turn from these vain things unto a living God”; 17:22—“I perceive that ye are more than usually reverent toward the divinities. … What therefore ye worship in ignorance, this I set forth unto you.”

Matthew Arnold: “Children of men! the unseen Power whose eye Forever doth accompany mankind, Hath looked on no religion scornfully That man did ever find. Which has not taught weak wills how much they can? Which has not fallen on the dry heart like rain? Which has not cried to sunk, self-weary man, Thou must be born again?” Christianity is absolutely exclusive, because it is absolutely inclusive. It is not an amalgamation of other religions, but it has in it all that is best and truest in other religions. It is the white light that contains all the colored rays. God may have made disclosures of truth outside of Judaism, and did so in Balaam and Melchisedek, in Confucius and Socrates. But while other religions have a relative excellence, Christianity is the absolute religion that contains all excellencies. Matheson, Messages of the Old Religions, 328–342—“Christianity is reconciliation. Christianity includes the aspiration of Egypt; it sees, in this aspiration, God in the soul (Brahmanism); recognizes the evil power of sin with Parseeism; goes back to a pure beginning like China; surrenders itself to human brotherhood like Buddha; gets all things from within like Judaism; makes the present life beautiful like Greece; seeks a universal kingdom like Rome; shows a growth of divine life, like the Teuton. Christianity is the manifold wisdom of God.” See also Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 88–93. Shakespeare: “There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distill it out”

(b) That the content of religion is greater than that of theology. The facts of religion come within the range of theology only so far as they can be definitely conceived, accurately expressed in language, and brought into rational relation to each other.

This principle enables us to define the proper limits of religious fellowship. It should be as wide as is religion itself. But it is important to remember what religion is. Religion is not to be identified with the capacity for religion. Nor can we regard the perversions and caricatures of religion as meriting our fellowship. Otherwise we might be required to have fellowship with devil-worship, polygamy, thuggery, and the inquisition; for all these have been dignified with the name of religion. True religion involves some knowledge, however rudimentary, of the true God, the God of righteousness; some sense of sin as the contrast between human character and the divine standard; some casting of the soul upon divine mercy and a divine way of salvation, in place of self-righteous earning of merit and reliance upon one's works and one's record; some practical effort to realize ethical principle in a pure life and in influence over others. Wherever these marks of true religion appear, even in Unitarians, Romanists, Jews or Buddhists, there we recognize the demand for fellowship. But we also attribute these germs of true religion to the inworking of the omnipresent Christ, “the light which lighteth every man” (John 1:9), and we see in them incipient repentance and faith, even though the Christ who is their object is yet unknown by name. Christian fellowship must have a larger basis in accepted Christian truth, and Church fellowship a still larger basis in common acknowledgment of N. T. teaching as to the church. Religiousfellowship, in the widest sense, rests upon the fact that “God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is acceptable to him” (Acts 10:34, 35).

(c) That religion is to be distinguished from formal worship, which is simply the outward expression of religion. As such expression, worship is “formal communion between God and his people.” In it God speaks to man, and man to God. It therefore properly includes the reading of Scripture and preaching on the side of God, and prayer and song on the side of the people.

Sterrett, Reason and Authority in Religion, 166—“Christian worship is the utterance (outerance) of the spirit.” But there is more in true love than can be put into a love-letter, and there is more in true religion than can be expressed either in theology or in worship. Christian worship is communion between God and man. But communion cannot be one-sided. Madame de Staël, whom Heine called “a whirlwind in petticoats,” ended one of her brilliant soliloquies by saying: “What a delightful conversation we have had!” We may find a better illustration of the nature of worship in Thomas à Kempis's dialogues between the saint and his Savior, in the Imitation of Christ. Goethe: “Against the great superiority of another there is no remedy but love. … To praise a man is to put one's self on his level.” If this be the effect of loving and praising man, what must be the effect of loving and praising God! Inscription in Grasmere Church: “Whoever thou art that enterest this church, leave it not without one prayer to God for thyself, for those who minister, and for those who worship here.”In James 1:27—“Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world”—“religion,” θρησκεία, is cultus exterior; and the meaning is that “the external service, the outward garb, the very ritual of Christianity, is a life of purity, love and self-devotion. What its true essence, its inmost spirit may be, the writer does not say, but leaves this to be inferred.” On the relation between religion and worship, see Prof. Day, in New Englander, Jan. 1882; Prof. T. Harwood Pattison, Public Prayer; Trench, Syn. N. T., 1; sec. 48; Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, Introd., Aphorism 23; Lightfoot, Gal., 351, note 2.